Chapter 43
CHAPTER 43
No estate in Hemlock Falls is ever in total darkness.
Timed lights trigger on driveways or trails. Motion sensors flicker lamps at the slightest twirl of a leaf on the breeze. And always, always there are night owls working through the spirit’s hours, sitting at their desk and wondering how their colleagues are doing in the forest only a few miles away. While the hunters face mist and monsters, they will nurse a hot tea and finish up their reports on Luminary Supply Chain Logistics in South Brazil.
Two such lights burn in the Wednesday estate: one on the highest floor, where the councilor lives and is currently being debriefed on the phone by Jeremiah Tuesday about An Incident that happened in the night.
The second is from an open door to the basement where hunters train. They’re only just getting started with their drill sergeant of a Lead Hunter, who barks out different combinations of rolls and swings and punches. The two newest recruits are struggling to keep up, and the taller of the two can’t help but moan Thank god when the Lead Hunter hollers, “Forest loop!”
She doesn’t actually know what forest loop means, but it’s got to be better than the hundred and fifty pushups she just did.
The hunters head out, falling into a familiar rhythm and order they’ve tracked out countless times. Hundreds of hunters before them have jogged this route; hundreds after them will too—although usually, they run in the evening, when the gray light that falls over the garden comes from the west instead of the east. And when there aren’t tens of booths and stages for a Hunters’ Feast to snake around.
And usually the hunters run before the mist rises, not after it has fallen at dawn. But these differences are so subtle that no one pays too much attention. Their muscles know which paths to take through the gardens; their feet know which forks to follow on the paths; and if there’s an unusual bite in the air as they tromp over pine needles and red soil, they just chalk it up to a freeze that came in the night before.
That is until they reach the stakes and electric sensors that mark the edge of the forest boundary.
Because here, mist scuttles outward like crabs across the ocean floor. Mist that should never stretch this far; mist that should have vanished an hour ago.
Worse—so, so much worse—is what crawls out with the mist: vampira. An entire horde of at least thirty monsters with their praying mantis arms and vicious mandibles. And although the sensors nearby are blink-blink- blinking with a franticness that means a thousand alarms are currently tripping at the Tuesday estate…
Well, there aren’t enough Tuesdays at the estate to do anything about it. They’ve all been sent out to deal with a delinquent Diana who stole a Hummer.
Besides, it’s not just here, near the Wednesday estate, that the sensors are losing their collective shit. It is every sensor that encircles the forest. They are all submerged by a mist that should not be there. A mist that is assembling nightmares after dawn.
The Lead Hunter is the first to understand what’s happening. No, she doesn’t understand the why or the how of it, but the what—oh yeah, she’s got that figured out. And as the Luminaries rules say: Any nightmare found outside the forest boundary must be killed on sight. That is the reason the Luminaries exist, and the Wednesdays are nothing if not the cause above all else.
So Rachel Wednesday cups her hands and roars, “Bellwether! Take down the bellwether!”
Three miles away, near the western shore of the Big Lake, the Tuesday night hunters, tired and busted after a night on the hunt, are limping into the forest parking lot.
Despite a full night facing nightmares, poor Isaac Tuesday’s ears are still ringing from the royal bless-downs he got less than twelve hours ago. First from Mason, then from Jeremiah. As punishment, Isaac doesn’t get to go home after the hunt this morning. He’s expected back on duty at the Tuesday estate to deal with a backlog of filing he’s pretty sure didn’t exist until last night.
Does it matter he tussled with a full-grown manticore at three A.M. ? Nope. He better get his ass back to the estate by eight.
Isaac rubs at his right shoulder and leans against a Hummer’s cold hood. His rotator cuff has been giving him grief again. His eyes too, from lack of sleep, which will only continue to worsen as the dawn stretches into day.
God, he’s so tired, his mind is playing tricks on him. He’s seeing things that aren’t there, like a white fog unspooling from the forest.
He scrubs his eyes.
It’s not going away. That is definitely a fog billowing out from the forest. And that is definitely a massive, hulking shape stomping and slashing this way.
Fuck me, he thinks. Not her again.
“MANTICORE!” he shouts, lurching away from the hood. Thank god he still has his gear strapped on. Thank god he hasn’t taken off his helmet. “MANTICORE!” he repeats, and this time he tugs a flash grenade off his belt.
He’s not fast enough. The manticore remembers him. You chopped off one of my antennae, she seems to say as she charges right for Isaac at the Hummer. He fumbles the grenade and dives for the other side of the vehicle. He ducks down right as the manticore slams into the metal chassis and hood with so much strength it shoves the Hummer back a whopping three feet. Isaac barely has time to roll under the Jeep parked next to it before the two vehicles collide.
Gunshots fire. Shouts ripple and ping. Someone else launches a flash grenade.
And Isaac can’t help but wonder as he crocodile-slithers out from under the Jeep, Why me? Why does this shit always happen to me?
A few miles south of the forest parking lot, four high-powered motorboats steam back and forth across the Little Lake. They beam spotlights into the water near the bridge, where all flow through the dam has been halted. The Tuesday Lambdas have already determined, thanks to divers, that there are no survivors trapped inside the Hummer. But they’ve yet to find where Winnie Wednesday and her accomplice have gotten to. They might be dead… but more likely, they’re alive. After all, Grayson Friday pulled this same prank four years ago and made it out just fine.
Dryden Saturday is going to be furious. Marcia Thursday, too—especially since her daughter was also an accomplice in Winnie’s escape. But Jeremiah hasn’t told them yet; he has only talked to Leila Wednesday at this point, because he needs her to be on the lookout for Winnie. When fugitives hide, they often flee to places they’re familiar with.
“Call me if she shows up,” Jeremiah commands from atop the bridge. Dawn rises in the east, but it’s a clouded dawn. And there’s a tenacity to the wind that portends storms.
His phone rings. It’s Lizzy Friday. But he sends her straight to voicemail. Her cameras and inventions drive him to distraction; right now, he needs to stay focused on Winnie Wednesday. On the damage control in his near future.
It is as Lizzy is calling him a second time, that a sound cuts into his ears. It’s so startlingly unexpected that it takes Jeremiah a solid five seconds to process what his ears are hearing.
A high-pitched wail echoes from downtown. It keens up, keens down. Again, again, again.
The Diana siren.
Well, now Jeremiah knows where Ms. Wednesday has fled to. And, grudgingly, he is impressed. She not only survived the crash off the dam, but she made it all the way to city hall. She is so, so much more formidable than her father ever was.
But Jeremiah will crush her. Because he must. She’s far too dangerous to leave free.
Jeremiah yanks a radio off his belt. “Downtown,” he barks, alerting the lead Lambda below. “Everyone. Now.” Then he stalks to his Hummer, his entourage of Lambdas standing sentry along the bridge scatter for their own vehicles like the good scorpions they are.
Below, four boat engines rev loudly, abandoning their search.
The siren still continues howling. It will wake up everyone in the town, and Jeremiah is about to have a real shitstorm on his hands. One led by certain Saturday and Thursday councilors.
But oh, how short-sighted this will prove to be for Jeremiah Tuesday. Because as the four scorpion speedboats zoom toward the northeastern shore where a concrete landing feeds into downtown, on the south eastern shore a pontoon boat putters to life. It has been made to look like a swan, complete with white wings and a graceful neck—although its current pilot ruins the effect by bonking into the dock three times. Then breaking off the tip of the left wing on a steel piling.
No one notices, though, because no one is looking at the Little Lake anymore. And definitely no one is looking at the Floating Carnival.
The swan sets off to the north, where clouds coagulate over the forest like scabs atop a wound.